Before World War II, Riga was the center of Jewish culture in Latvia. The 43,000 Jews who lived there constituted 11 percent of the population, and more than half of the Jewish population in all of Latvia. The German Army entered Riga at the end of June 1941. In the first several months of the occupation, 4,000 of the Jews of Riga were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen, and 30,000 more were concentrated into the Riga Ghetto. On November 19, the Germans separated the 4,000 Jews of the ghetto who were working — mostly skilled men — and isolated them in a small portion of the ghetto. On November 29, German and Latvian guards surrounded the rest of the ghetto to begin the “Jeckeln Action,” named for the brutal German commander Friedrich Jeckeln. Over the next eight days, the remaining Jewish prisoners were gathered into groups of 1,000 and escorted five miles away to the Rumbula Forest. There, more than 25,000 Latvian Jewish children, women, and men were shot to death next to large burial pits.
The Germans murdered the Jews of Riga to make room for Jews from Germany, Austria, and Bohemia and Moravia. Bert’s transport was one of the first to arrive in the next few days.
